Critical Point

Hodan is sixteen, Finnish-Somali, and already running out of second chances. After a fight with a fellow athlete gets her expelled from her Sports Academy and estranged from her coach, she ends up in Ylitornio, deep in Finnish Lapland, living with a father she barely knows. Her Olympic dream seems further away than ever.

Then she finds an old ski jump hill that probably should have been abandoned years ago, and the three men who still use it. Seppo is a former professional who never quite let go of the sport. The bickering brothers Mats and Jomppe are harder to explain. None of them are obvious coaching material. But Seppo sees something in Hodan that she is not yet ready to see in herself, and an unlikely arrangement begins.

Kriittinen Piste, directed by Kaisa El Ramly from a script by Aleksi Puranen, Antti Kaarlela, Antti Kairakari, and Naima Mohamus, is a Finnish drama-comedy that earns both halves of that description. The humour comes naturally from the collision of personalities and methods. The emotional weight comes from Hodan herself, a young woman trying to rebuild something, on the hill and off it.